Development of nutrition quotient for elementary school children to evaluate dietary quality and eating behaviors / 한국영양학회지

ABSTRACT

Purpose@#This study was undertaken to develop a nutrition quotient for elementary school children (NQ-C) for evaluating the overall dietary quality and eating behaviors. @*Methods@#The NQ-C was developed by implementing 3 stages item generation, item reduction, and validation. Candidate food behavior checklist (FBC) items of the NQ-C were derived from systematic literature reviews, expert in-depth interviews, statistical analyses of the fifth Korean National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey data, and national nutrition policies and recommendations. For the pilot survey, 260 elementary school students (128 second graders and 132 fifth graders) completed self-administered questionnaires as well as 24-hour dietary intakes, with the help of their parents and survey team staff, if required. Based on the pilot survey results, expert reviews, and priorities of national nutrition policy and recommendations, checklist items were reduced from 41 to 24. A total of 20 items for NQ-C were finally selected from results generated from 1,144 nationwide samples surveyed. Construct validity of the NQ-C was assessed using the confirmatory factor analysis, LInear Structural RELations. @*Results@#Analyses of the exploratory factors of NQ-C identified that 5 dimensions of diet (balance, diversity, moderation, practice and environment) accounted for 46.2% of the total variance. Standardized path coefficients were used as weights of the items. The NQ-C and 5-factor scores of the subjects were calculated using the obtained weights of the FBC items. @*Conclusion@#Our data indicates that NQ-C is a useful and suitable instrument for assessing nutrition adequacy, dietary quality, and eating behaviors of Korean elementary school children.